Tuesday, 18 June 2013

Nightmare journey

Friday, June 18th., Felixstowe.

We rode out of Ipswich at dusk, with rain coming on, a high wind whistling behind us in the telegraph wires, and every sign of a stormy night. We had scarcely climbed the hill from the town, when an incoming cyclist warned us of bad roads; and indeed the roads proved worse than his account of them. Nevertheless we rode every foot of the twelve miles to this place. Soon after 9.30 it was quite dark, the rain was coming down steadily, the wind (fortunately at our backs) had increased, and we were riding warily across a wild naked country on a road of which the narrow cart-ruts formed the only rideable surface; all else was loose sand, sticky and dangerous with rain.

For miles we rode on hardened strips of road scarcely a foot wide, the wheels of the bicycles continually grating among sand and pebbles as we groped our way forward. The rain gradually penetrated our clothing and settled in our shoes, till my feet at least were stone cold. At every few yards we started a rabbit or a stoat or some unrecognizable creature of the night. There were no houses or cultivated ground till we passed through a village only two miles from Felixstowe. After this we lost our way, having Felixstowe on our right. My lamp went out, and on dismounting I found that my invalid right arm was useless, and so we walked the last mile to a hotel in the pouring rain.

Marriott vowed he enjoyed the ride thoroughly. I was anxious, uncomfortable in my saddle, and nervous. Clearly my nerves had not yet recovered from the accident in March when I dislocated my elbow and had to have a chloroform operation. My arm was in splints for a month, and in a sling for six weeks. I imagined every possible sort of accident, in each case following out a train of circumstances to the direst possible climax. In particular, I dreaded a puncture, and that I might take a cold, to be followed by rheumatic fever. Yet underneath this surface discontent, discomfort, and sick imagination, there was a sense of deep satisfaction, the satisfaction of facing and overcoming difficulties, of slowly achieving a desired end, in spite of obstacles.

I have a great passion for this new sport of bicycling, in spite of occasional accidents. Arguably the bicycle has liberated a whole generation of youths, done a great deal (indirectly through the bloomers) for the emancipation of women, and changed the kinship structure of British village life, possibly saving many a pocket of rural England from genetic decline. It is a convenient democratic pastime which suits my nature particularly well; riding a bicycle is not unlike writing a novel in that both are good for exercising the will.

With four key aspects (steering, safety, comfort and speed) improved over the penny-farthing, 'safety bicycles' became very popular among elites and the middle classes in Europe and North America in the middle and late 1890s. It was the first bicycle that was suitable for women, and as such the "freedom machine" (as American feminist Susan B. Anthony called it) was taken up by women in large numbers.

Bicycle historians often call this period the "golden age" or "bicycle craze." By the start of the 20th Century, cycling had become an important means of transportation, and in the United States an increasingly popular form of recreation. Bicycling clubs for men and women spread across the U.S. and across European countries.

Since women could not cycle in the then-current fashions for voluminous and restrictive dress, the bicycle craze fed into a movement for so-called rational dress, which helped liberate women from corsets and ankle-length skirts and other encumbering garments, substituting the then-shocking bloomers.The impact of the bicycle on female emancipation should not be underestimated. The safety bicycle gave women unprecedented mobility, contributing to their larger participation in the lives of Western nations. As bicycles became safer and cheaper, more women had access to the personal freedom they embodied, and so the bicycle came to symbolise the New Woman of the late nineteenth century, especially in Britain and the United States. Feminists and suffragists recognised its transformative power. The backlash against the New (bicycling) Woman was demonstrated when the male undergraduates of Cambridge University chose to show their opposition to the admission of women as full members of the university by hanging a woman in effigy in the main town square—tellingly, a woman on a bicycle—as late as 1897. Since women could not cycle in the then-current fashions for voluminous and restrictive dress, the bicycle craze fed into a movement for so-called rational dress, which helped liberate women from corsets and ankle-length skirts and other encumbering garments, substituting the then-shocking bloomers.